Madden NFL 12 gives you more control than ever over every aspect of the game, and makes subtle tweaks to make the game ever more realistic and enjoyable, but aspects of it might be too much for the average gamer.

Playing the GameThe changes in Madden NFL 12 don’t affect the actual controlling of the game as much as they do how you manage your team and the game. The umbrella term for a number of changes is Dynamic Player Performance. Basically what this does is make sure you never play the same game twice. New Consistency and Confidence ratings mean players have good games and bad games, forcing you to shake up your game plan depending on who’s hot and who’s cold. At launch, the Confidence rating is set at 3 out of 5; game results, both real-life (there are weekly roster updates, if your device supports it) and in-game, affect players’ Confidence ratings as time goes on. Cam Newton, as a rookie, is prone to go on a hot streak if he has a good game, but just as quickly throws two interceptions and is out of sorts for three weeks. All will affect his real-life confidence, which will in turn affect how he plays in Madden NFL 12.

There are a number of new ratings and traits, which serve mostly to help you put together exactly the team you need. Defensive backs are “Big Hitters” or “Plays Ball in Air” guys, and QBs can be “Throw Ball Away” players or “Tuck and Run” specialists. It helps you scout the team you’re playing against and get into the heads of your own players to find out what they want to do. In addition, there’s more management to do: You control all the preseason player cuts (you can have 75 players on your team in the preseason, with strict requirements and budgets to mee)), and there’s a huge premium placed on scouting players to find the best ones.

Madden’s adding an awful lot to keep track of if you want to dominate all comers or build a decades-long dynasty, but it makes for an experience with more control, and it turns the game into something more akin to actually running a team. Every action has a reaction, and there are an infinite number of factors that you have to react to, both in and out of the game.

Solid TacklesThough it’s not the focus with Madden NFL 12, there are in-game improvements. The most important is by itself worth the price of upgrading: tackling in this game is finally as it should be. For as long as I’ve been playing Madden, when you played defense all you had to do was be near the offensive player, and by some miracle of physics they’d be sucked into you and you’d tackle them. Not so anymore: you only tackle a player you actually hit, which makes tackling both harder and more realistic. To tackle a player, you have to hit the Tackle button at the moment you make contact with the offensive player, or else risk lunging or diving at thin air.

Otherwise, in-game improvements are mostly minor: Teams play smarter zone defense now, and you can pump fake to an individual receiver. Once again, Madden 12 is all about making the game more realistic, and giving the player more granular control.

Madden NFL 12 tries to mitigate all that detail a bit by making certain things easier on the gamer, like play-calling. When you start a game, you can choose either “Conventional” play-calling, which gives you the full playbook on every play, or “Game Flow,” which just asks you whether you want to run, pass, or stick to the gameplan on the next play. That’s all well and good, but it defaults to the Game Flow mode, and if I forgot to change the setting before the game I had to manually go back to the playbook every play. It’s not a huge issue, but it’s frustrating for an experienced player. Even the playbook isn’t perfect; it uses three different menus—formation, sub-formation, and play—that are confusing to navigate, making finding your play harder than it needs to be.

Madden CommunitiesIf you’ve ever played Madden online, you know that the players you’re likely to meet range from the accidentally-connected couch potato to the serious gamer who trains and practices on a daily basis. Most games have systems for allowing players to find opponents similar in both ability and dedication; Madden hasn’t, until now.

Madden Communities lets Madden NFL 12 players set up what are basically semi-private rooms for like players. Whoever creates the Community can set the gameplay rules and options, and moderate the group by kicking out players who don’t fit. Each Community can have up to 2,000 members, and has a running scoreboard of games within it. Communities have their own chat rooms, and can play games against other Communities; it’s like having your own Fantasy football league, but this time you actually get to play football.

If you’re just a casual, play-with-friends Madden owner, you could honestly do without upgrading—aside from the tackling improvements, most of the bigger changes only become obvious when you play the game frequently, and in modes other than Exhibition. For even the semi-serious player, though, it’s a must-have. This is the most realistic, most true-to-the-game, and most controllable Madden ever. Especially if you’ve got a good TV, the graphics are so good people are likely to confuse your game for the real thing, and you might mistake yourself for a powerhouse head coach/star player/general manager hybrid. It’s easily an Editors’ Choice, a game anyone with even a passing interest in football is sure to enjoy. (Just don’t look the players in the eyes.)

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David Pierce is a junior analyst on the PCMag consumer electronics reviews team. He’s a recent graduate of the University of Virginia, and got his journalistic experience (and a tech itch) working with David Pogue at the New York Times and interning at Wired. When not writing and editing, you’ll find David either playing Ultimate Frisbee, extolling the virtues of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (it''s way better than Starbucks), or avoiding doing his laundry. And probably tweeting about it allhe’s @piercedavid....
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